Mike,
The topic of splitting the forum into more focussed areas has arisen before.
 The main driver is that people have tons of e-mail and delete 90% of the
messages.

I would suggest that it is beneficial to keep it one forum for the cross
fertilization of ideas.  I think it is useful for people in a wave soldering
area to understand what is going on in the fabrication area.  Understanding
plating issues might help you understand why you have some difficulties with
existing designs.  I regularly deal with people who are knowledgable aobut
their particular areas, but cannot adopt a view of the entire manufacturing
process.  A case of not seeing the forest for the trees.

For myself, I learn lots of things about metallurgy (thanks Hillman) board
fabrication (thanks Hoover and Cupples) and many other topics that I would
not have gotten if the forum were segmented.  Anyway, that's my two cents
worth.

Doug Pauls
CSL